Hide-away front reciever

terryd · Aug 4, 2008

Well, I've been needing tow points for a while now. I decided a while ago I wanted to build something a little more stable than your standard bolt on style tow hooks. I searched on here till I found the pdf for the bumper-mount/steering box brace and made them out of 1/4" plate about 6 months ago. That sat around till I picked up some 2.5"x2.5"x1/4" box for a song. I took that over to a friends house who has a mig welder and we began. This is what I wound up with, what do you guys think?

I cut the factory bumper to allow the reciever tube to stick through.

Then cut my license plate bracket to allow it to "hide" in-behind the license plate.

Now all that's visable is about 1/8" of the bottom of the tube under the front plate. Now I've got to design a trick set of hinges to allow the plate to just flip up instead of having to remove it every time I use it.

Mudderoy · Aug 4, 2008

Very nice. It's almost James Bondish!

userbmx1315 · Aug 4, 2008

put a tag on there and no one would know. thats pretty slick

NWPhotog · Aug 5, 2008

Turfzilla · Aug 5, 2008

Nice job, I like it. Is the pin easy to access?

dinorl007 · Aug 5, 2008

looks good, u could get a rear license plate mount off of one of the old cars that had the gas filler behind the license plate that has the hinge built in,

terryd · Aug 5, 2008

Turfzilla said:
Nice job, I like it. Is the pin easy to access?

Thanks! The pin goes in no problem. We had to do some trimming of one of the braces to make it happen though.

dinorl007 said:
looks good, u could get a rear license plate mount off of one of the old cars that had the gas filler behind the license plate that has the hinge built in,

I was thinking the same thing. I have a few old camaros laying around, but their mount stuck out almost 1.5" and would make it look funny. I'm going to head to the junk yard later and see what they have.

ehall · Aug 5, 2008

looks good

FitchVA · Aug 5, 2008

nice!

MoFo · Aug 5, 2008

Please post what you find for a hinged license plate bracket, along with donor vehicle information. I have a front receiver I need to cover also. I just have not made it to the boneyard yet to look.

DeftwillP · Aug 6, 2008

got better pics of how it mounts? That would be an area of concern to me

terryd · Aug 6, 2008

DeftwillP said:
got better pics of how it mounts? That would be an area of concern to me

It mounts with the factory bumper mount bolts as well as the three steeringbox bolts. The passengerside has the same three holes for the steering box as the drivers side so I just put in three ( I believe 1/2" bolts) bolts with heavy fender washers and locknuts. I can get some pictures tomorrow if you'd like.

terryd · Aug 6, 2008

DeftwillP said:
got better pics of how it mounts? That would be an area of concern to me

Here you go. Not great, but you can see basically how it mounts. Its the same on both sides, this is the passengerside.

cherokeefan_1 · Aug 11, 2008

A 68-72 chevelle plate bracket only sticks out about 3/4" and folds down.

terryd · Nov 14, 2008

One thing to add: The license plate bracket on this XJ if off of a 88 Chevy C-1500. The Jeep was originally out of North Carolina which doesn't require front plates, so I had to adapt this old bracket we just had sitting around to it.

xjtrailrider · Nov 14, 2008

Looks good Terry, I'm thinking about something like this on my sons XJ but more on the lines of the Detour BackBone as well. I have already made the side plates out of 1/4" steel and plan on tieing in the crossmember.

terryd · Nov 14, 2008

That Detour's Back Bone is pretty nice. The reason I did mine this way was to just use the 2" reciever for what ever attachments I wanted to use. I can put a shackle bracket in it, a winch mount, a trailer hitch if I want to push trailers (it does some work on the farm back home), I can put on a luggage carrier if I need more gear storeage or what ever I need. Also, if I use a winch mount, I can move the winch from the front to the rear so I can pull backwards too. Plus, it helps to stiffen up the front of the unibody a little, and when I get out of school and can do more work on stuff, I'd like to add a plate to the inside of the uni-rail on the passenger side to distribute the force more evenly and help stiffen that section of body.

bobfortier · Nov 14, 2008

About the hinges for license plates, my 93 YJ had this, so you can try to find a YJ in the junkyard, and get the hinges of that

terryd · Nov 14, 2008

bobfortier said:
About the hinges for license plates, my 93 YJ had this, so you can try to find a YJ in the junkyard, and get the hinges of that

Front or rear? I'm not up on my YJ's, but why did they have it hinged?

markw · Nov 14, 2008

I'd extend the side mounts back to where the factory tow hooks mount and throw a 1/2" bolt in there. Much more beef than the 7/16" steering mount bolts. Looks good though, and will work well as a front skid.

Hide-away front reciever

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